WEEK IN MOVIES

7MATE, 9PM ★★★★ The facts sur­round­ing the Ger­man oc­cu­pa­tion of France dur­ing World War II get pulped into fic­tion by mav­er­ick film­maker Quentin Tarantino. The story cen­tres on a team of Jewish-Amer­i­can com­man­dos who be­come in­volved in a bizarre at­tempt to as­sas­si­nate Hitler in a Paris cinema. Tarantino’s trade­marked, highly stylised use of blood, guts and vi­o­lence still burst to the fore on oc­ca­sion. How­ever, there is no es­cap­ing that In­glou­ri­ous Bas­terds prefers yakety-yak to all-out at­tack. This block­buster 150-minute pro­duc­tion is Tarantino just shy of his very best: ir­rev­er­ent, ir­ra­tional and ir­re­sistibly en­ter­tain­ing. Stars Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger.

MON­DAY SNOW­PIERCER

FOX­TEL AC­TION/AD­VEN­TURE 7.30PM ★★★★ This ut­terly bril­liant, slyly in­no­va­tive ac­tion pic­ture is­sues a bar­rage of fu­ture shocks in a press­ing present tense. In a bid to stop global warm­ing, cli­mate sci­en­tists have trig­gered a new ice age. Ev­ery­one dies in the en­su­ing snap freeze, ex­cept for the oc­cu­pants of a lux­ury bul­let train. In the years that fol­low, each car­riage be­comes a na­tion unto it­self. An in­te­rior se­cu­rity sys­tem – an un­of­fi­cial set of bor­ders, if you like – keeps ev­ery­one in their place. Due to an am­bi­tious combo of the high­con­cept and the high-oc­tane, this is an ex­pe­ri­ence best seen (al­most lit­er­ally) cold. Stars Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swin­ton.

TUES­DAY LUCY

FOX­TEL PRE­MIERE, 5.55PM ★★★ A fast and loose ac­tion movie hell-bent on get­ting in your face and stay­ing on your mind by any means nec­es­sary. Scar­lett Jo­hans­son plays an ex­pat Amer­i­can stu­dent in Tai­wan who has been com­man­deered as a drug mule by lo­cal traf­fick­ers. Af­ter the ac­ci­den­tal in­take of a dan­ger­ous new sub­stance, Lucy’s brain ca­pac­ity starts ex­pand­ing at an ex­po­nen­tial rate. The power un­leashed by this ever-open­ing mind can man­i­fest it­self in ways which must be seen to be be­lieved. And just as of­ten, not be­lieved.

WED­NES­DAY THE DE­SCENT

SBS2, 10.10PM ★★★ Six women lost while on a cav­ing ex­pe­di­tion in the moun­tains be­gin to sus­pect they are not alone. The best hor­ror film of 2006 is a pun­ish­ing Bri­tish-pro­duced thriller do­ing the fright thing with­out mak­ing any of the wrong moves we as­so­ciate with stan­dard-for­mat hack’em-ups. Beware of how writer-di­rec­tor Neil Mar­shall plays his gory hand at the cli­max af­ter build­ing a rich at­mos­phere of mount­ing dread. Stars Natalie Men­doza, Shauna Macdon­ald.

THURS­DAY 27 DRESSES

FOX­TEL DRAMA/RO­MANCE, 9.10PM ★★★ A qual­ity rom-com ca­pa­ble of com­ing up with some un­ex­pected big laughs ex­actly when needed. Kather­ine Heigl ( Knocked Up) stars as a woman who not only loses her se­cret love to her younger sis­ter, but also has her se­cret life as a se­rial brides­maid pub­licly ex­posed by a cyn­i­cal jour­nal­ist. This gen­uine crowd-pleaser does so much right, you can for­give the oc­ca­sional trite stretch.

FRI­DAY THE HOB­BIT: THE DES­O­LA­TION OF SMAUG

NINE, 8.40PM ★★ At 160 min­utes, there’s a lot of drag­gin’ just to get to the dragon. Back in Mid­dleearth, ev­ery­one is dis­play­ing wor­ry­ing symp­toms as­so­ci­ated with the dreaded plight known as Middle-film Syn­drome. Yes, part two of the Hob­bit tril­ogy, The Des­o­la­tion of Smaug, is upon us. There will be dwarfs. There will be a dragon. A few elves. Many orcs. And a stand­ing in­vi­ta­tion to lie back and take a quick nap when­ever you like. Bilbo Bag­gins (Martin Free­man), Gan­dalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) and dwarf war­rior Thorin Oak­en­shield (Richard Ar­mitage) are still on a slow and scenic mis­sion to re­claim the lost land of Ere­bor. The road­block up ahead in this movie will be found at Lonely Moun­tain, where a vi­cious dragon named Smaug (voiced with a venom both sin­is­ter and sar­cas­tic by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch) re­sides.

SATUR­DAY NIGHT AT THE MU­SEUM

TEN, 6.30PM ★★ A below-par Ben Stiller stars as a nervy night­watch­man try­ing to rein in the chaos that breaks out in a mu­seum ev­ery evening. Thank­fully, the spe­cial ef­fects used to sim­u­late the static ex­hibits com­ing to life (di­nosaurs, stat­ues and war­riors) are both strong and var­ied enough to pre­vent a to­tally worn-out wel­come. Based on the book by Mi­lan Trenc.